


like gathering drops of rain (it's useless)

by seamayweed (night_shade)



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Non-Consensual Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 16:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14573247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/night_shade/pseuds/seamayweed
Summary: Once when he was still a boy his father told him of the ocean at night and how not few men have fallen overboard by staring too long, too hard, too late. Bruce looks away, closes his eyes, but he thinks he has drowned a long time ago.





	like gathering drops of rain (it's useless)

**Author's Note:**

> Umm, hi, this isn't actually a new story but a repost from my old lj account (I was becausecandy there). I'm in a different fandom now but Batjokes will always have a special place in my heart. Hope you enjoy this!

 

He wakes gasping, choking, as if drowning.

  
He gathers the sheets around himself tightly, not leaving any skin exposed, shivering madly under layers and layers of thick blankets. No matter how tightly he wraps them around himself he can’t seem to stop shaking.

  
Outside, the glass slowly fills with droplets, tiny against the night sky.

  
*

  
The cowl is broken, having collided too hard with the alley wall and the Joker knows, oh how he knows, those skittish fingers clad in garish purple inching closer and closer to his head and he takes a shuddering breath –

  
He is turned around by firm hands, his masked face pressed into the slab of table along with the front of his sore body. He faintly feels the madman’s body press against his, warm and firm. That nasal voice is saying something, varying in pitch like waves of a stormy sea, but he can’t actually make it out, a concussion he thinks. His head is aching and he can’t move.

  
The little he sees in the dark room blurs together, lines bending and melting and becoming one huge mass of color and shapes.

  
There’s a mouth, warmth seeping through the cowl into his ear, piercing into the haze of his pounding head, the intense smell of grease paint making his stomach churn with the desire to puke.

  
The whisper slithers into his skull like a disease, sick and low.

  
“Caught you.”

  
*

  
Warm water drips from the shower head on his face, flattening his hair, delicately tracing the shell of his ear, tickling its way down shoulder blades and the hardening nipples on his chest, dipping into his belly button and reaching around to the small of his back, curving down, in-between to caress his inner thighs, curling around the backs of his knees before finally coalescing around his curling toes, lingering, clinging to his skin.

  
He closes his eyes, as if it would make it better.

  
It doesn’t.

  
*

  
He is paralyzed without any way to defend himself as piece by piece of armor sticking wetly to his skin is removed from his body by swift swipes of a knife, coming precariously close to nicking his skin and he doesn’t know if it actually does because he is numb, a steady cold caressing him where he is exposed to the icy sting of air.

  
He should fight, resist, throw the Joker off him right now, but he can’t, _but he can’t_. He’s too numb, no strength left in his throbbing limbs and all he sees are black, grey and purplegreenwhitered.

  
Faintly he notices his teeth chattering. He clamps down, immediately.

  
The figure above him shifts, strangely quiet but for the rustle of clothes and the wet smack of lips, nearly drowned by the downpour outside, warmth once again pressing to his back and he closes his eyes because he anticipates what comes next, dread coiling in his stomach like a snake threatening to burst out in a flurry of leathery wings, heavy with rain and falling, falling, _falling_ –

  
*

  
He’s cold and shivering, water dripping to the tiles in a pool.

  
Too caught in his reflection he does not even remember to dry himself with a towel. Instead he stares at himself, gaunt and grey and tired. He looks like a man gone insane. Broken.

  
( _like a broken boy who grew into an even more broken man_ )

  
Snarling, cheeks stretching over too sharp cheekbones, his fist buries itself in the mirror, the shards piercing his flesh, but he is too numb to care in the wake of anger fading too quickly for him to hold on to.

  
*

  
It never comes. Instead hands, rough with scars – and he never noticed him shedding the gloves – caress his skin in light, feathery touches, at first tentative then adopting a steady slow pace, as if to stretch time.

  
The touch is light but thorough and by now he feels slight feverishness under the heat of palms, beginning from his neck to shoulders and arms, flattening against shoulder blades, thumbs circling around the edges as though feeling for wings, finger tips hooking in dips and muscle, tracing the knobs of his spine to meet at the small of his back, downwards –

  
His breath hitches.

  
But he doesn’t linger, doesn’t press down harder than before, each brush as tender as the next, fluttering in a pitter-patter of butterfly wings against his skin. Softly he feels a nose burying itself against the spot between his shoulder blades, actually breathing in deeply, raggedly, like a dying man, and holding it for a long moment that might have been eternity.

  
He almost thinks the Joker has died from a conscious refusal of air when he exhales, slow and drawn-out, a note of tremble on scarred lips that are warm and damp against him.

  
And then he is turned around, so suddenly that his world tips and spins, vertigo settling in before he is pressed on his back, his trembling thighs pressing around the blur of purplegreenwhitered. His chest is heaving, eyes wide and unseeing with his hair sticking wetly to his forehead. He never noticed the cowl being taken away and he closes his eyes, as if it would make it better. But it doesn’t, and then the Joker is touching him, again and again _and again_.

  
He drowns.

  
*

  
Bruce’s hair sticks wetly to his forehead as he stares at the grave with eyes that scream of crippling grief and mindless rage.

  
He is a broken boy.

  
The rain pours down on him, icy water seeping through layers of clothes to carve marks into soft, vulnerable flesh. He doesn’t notice, too caught in the burning hot fury licking at the corners of his mind and threatening to escape through fine lines of spider web cracks in porcelain skin.

  
To him the drops of rain sound like ( _gunfire_ ) pearls falling against the ground, purity forever lost to the stain of Gotham.

  
*

  
There is actually a flick of a tongue against his collar bone, as if testing the taste of prey, ear hovering on his chest to listen to the frantic beating of his heart, fingers brushing over places where he holds his breath in fear, but they do not stop.

  
Almost reverently the hair sticking to his face is tucked back, cool hand gently cradling his cheek, and he inhales sharply when lightning flashes, briefly illuminating the Joker’s features in a wash of blue-white and Bruce wishes he never had to see that because oh God the clown isn’t smiling, his mud-brown almost black eyes are filled with an eerie intensity and adoration and reverence that whispers of insanityobsessionworship.

  
Deep in his throat he chokes out a broken sound of despair, low and pained like that of a dying animal.

  
He suddenly realizes, _knows_ he’s the cause of this madness, the creator of this monster, the one who needs to take responsibility because all of it is –

  
( _the result of a broken man trying to play hero, really bruce, who gothammommydaddyyourself are you trying to fool?_ )

  
With purpose he presses dry lips to Bruce’s brow, tasting his sweat, dirty-nailed fingers brushing against lashes as if counting them and following the bridge of his nose, spreading on his cheekbone, thumb tracing the shape of his trembling lips. He doesn’t notice he's crying until a tongue laps at his cheek like a hungry animal, mouthing words like _“smile for me”_ , _“Shsh-shhsh, Bruce”_ , _“mine, Bats, mine”_ like a prayer of absolution.

  
He only cries harder.

  
*

  
Back curled around the sink and hands grabbing the edges tightly his attention is pulled to the fat drops of blood trickling from the cuts in his fist, dull pain forgotten for the warm fluid spilling over the thin knobs of ( _white_ ) knuckles onto the ( _white_ ) porcelain in spider web lines. He is unable to look away.

  
Slowly, as if possessed, he raises the blood-soaked finger to his face, spreading the welling redness over his lips and across his cheeks, eyes fluttering closed as he follows the trail of blood from finger to elbow in seeming bliss, tongue curling to catch every drop of blood.

  
When he opens his eyes he sees a shattered reflection of himself, twisted and broken, a haphazard smile of red smeared on thin lips.

  
*

  
Soft lips brush against scars, murmuring benediction into the raised skin, rough scar tissue of cheeks rubbing intimately against his own to memorize, to familiarize and to ( _make his own_ ) baptize.

  
Each spot is lavished with equal care of feather-soft drumming, stroking and the tender caress of hands, his body an altar to be worshipped by the most devout of followers, a faith so terrifyingly strong and unbreakable he is swept under the tide of sensations, sinking down, down, down into a bottomless ocean of

  
( _fanaticism_ )

  
madness.

  
(and later, much, much later when he is alone he will be lying there eyes wide pupils dilated hyperventilating in a circle of shattered armor plates empty eyes of the cowl screaming furyjusticeviolence but there is no burninghotrage only skin-deep touches that seep through the seams of scars that never quite healed right in a steady trickle of purplegreenwhitered and

  
_Olordforgiveusoursinscomeonhitmelovemekillmeiwantyoutodoit_ hallowedbethyname –)

  
A single word said in a voice tight with adoration, _“Batman.”_

  
*

  
Huddled in the blankets Bruce pulls the fabric even tighter around his form almost to the point of ( _suffocation_ ) pain as though it were the only thing that kept him from falling apart.

  
_Pitter-patter_.

  
He closes his eyes, as if it would make it better but it doesn’t, never does.

  
( _It never stops._ )

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can also visit me on [tumblr](http://seamayweed.tumblr.com) if you like Marvel, Norse mythology and my Norse BrOT3 Baldr/Thor/Loki :)


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